


ease up a little bit

by sea_level



Category: Project Blue Book (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Episode: s01e09 Abduction, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-14 14:21:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18054152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sea_level/pseuds/sea_level
Summary: An anon on tumblr sent me: "Wait hold on, what if after they fight, allen decided to patch quinn's wounds????"Expanded here.





	ease up a little bit

**Author's Note:**

> So uh, I got this [ask](https://pentopello.tumblr.com/post/183325181945/wait-hold-on-what-if-after-they-fight-allen), and I thought, hey what if I just write out the entire thing, so like big credit to anon for the idea.
> 
> I went back and watched the scene near the end of episode 9 a bunch to help write this, and when Michael asks Allen to reconsider and he looks heartbroken? Like he’s on the verge of tears??? I might have watched it one too many times

“You know, you have a cut above your, uh.” Allen points to his eye.

Michael looks at him, distinctly unimpressed. “I believe that came from you earlier,” he replies. “You’ve gotten better since that bar fight in Alabama.”

Allen shakes his head, smiling wryly. “Let me, ah—” He stands and locates the medical kit under one of the cabinets and presents it with little flourish.

“You don’t have to,” Michael says, blinking in surprise. It’s not a gesture he was expecting. The cut isn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination. He had been planing cleaning it up and bandaging it when he got home.

“It _is_ my fault that you got it in the first place.” Allen shrugs. “Why not?”

Michael stares at him. He can’t think to say anything, but he doesn’t move away when Allen approaches.

Allen rests a hand on Michael’s shoulder and lightly pushes him down onto the chair. He sets the kit down on the table, giving Michael a questioning look.

“Alright,” Michael acquiesces, and Allen gives him a grateful smile in return.

Allen opens up the kit, and roots through it for the supplies he needs. Rubbing alcohol, cotton balls, gauze, tape. He puts a cotton ball on the mouth of the bottle of rubbing alcohol and tips it quickly, just long enough to transfer it. Gently, he tilts Michael’s head up so they’re looking at each other and then says, “This is probably going to sting a bit.”

“I know, doc,” Michael replies faintly, and it does when Allen softly wipes the cotton over the cut, clearing away most of the blood. He’s felt way worse pain before that the faint sensation of the alcohol should barely register, but he’s hyper-aware now, of Allen’s proximity, of the fact that his hand is still cradling Michael’s face, keeping it steady. He can feel Allen’s breath on his forehead, where the alcohol is drying quickly.

Allen gives the cut one more pass before leaning back to check how it looks.

Michael swallows and tries not to think too hard, tries not to equate this widening of the space between them to the fact that Allen is leaving him. He tells himself that he can’t miss something he’s never had, that this one brief moment of intimacy isn’t actually indicative of anything more except that they could have been friends once, maybe under different circumstances.

Allen smiles and tosses the cotton ball in the trash. “The cut's not that deep,” he says. “You shouldn’t need stitches or anything like that.”

Michael’s lips quirk up in a brief smile. “I know I said you’ve gotten better, but you’re not that good yet.”

Allen laughs at that, humming out a “maybe”. He cuts the gauze down to the right size and tears off a strip of the tape. “Hold still,” he says and presses the patch down into place, careful not to apply any pressure onto the cut itself. He smiles then. "Looking good."

“Thanks,” Michael says and moves to stand up, but Allen pushes him back down. Something playful shifts in his eyes.

“So that’s all I managed to do?” he asks. “One cut?”

It’s not malicious in any way, and, if Michael had to hazard a guess, he probably wasn’t actually curious either. Likely, it was just some attempt to lighten the conversation.

“You only punched me once,” Michael replies. It had been sloppy of him to have even allowed Allen that opening, but he was angry at the time, feeding off of Allen’s own anger and fueled by his sense of betrayal.

Yeah. He was sloppy when he let Allen shove him into the filing cabinet and sloppy again when Allen all but threw him towards the couch. At least he’d gotten Allen off of him then, before the situation devolved into something else, whatever that might have been. Maybe Allen would have really wailed on him, or maybe Michael would have done something really stupid, pressed to the couch with all of his inhibitions stripped away by his ire.

“We did a lot more than exchange punches,” Allen says. He at least has the conscience to look guilty even if he doesn’t sound like it.

“What, and you got away entirely injury free?” Michael asks.

“You didn’t hit me that hard.”

Control was something Michael’s training had granted him. He knew how to pull his punches, how to disable instead of maim. Allen didn’t. Michael wasn’t even sure if he was aware.

Michael shrugs. “I might have a few bruises, but I doubt you managed to break skin.”

Allen gives him an appraising look. “Let’s check,” he says as if it were nothing out of the ordinary.

The proposition sounds so reasonable that Michael’s hands drift up to his collar before he fully processes what Allen’s said.

“Wait,” he says, stilling. “You want me to take off my shirt?”

“Well, unless you want me poking blindly at your back to find any offending bruises...”

“Why are we checking for bruises in the first place?” he asks.

“It’s better to know they’re there than not,” Allen supplies. “That way, you can avoid re-aggravating anything.”

It all made sense when he said it like that, but that didn’t change the fact that he would literally be disrobing in front of Allen in their shared work space.

“You don’t have to,” Allen says with a little bit of forced patience. “The pros and cons are yours to weigh.”

Michael swallows his apprehension. “No, it’s alright, I just need to—” Allen steps back to give him room to stand up “—thanks.”

He keeps his eyes firmly away from Allen while he undresses. He does it mechanically to keep himself from letting his emotions interpret the situation differently from what he knows it is. Tie. Vest. Shirt. Undershirt. His eyes fall on Allen’s letter of resignation and his fists tighten reflexively. For better or for worse, the cold shock helps keep him in the right state of mind.

Allen steps behind him the second he’s finished. “It doesn’t look too bad,” he says. “You do have a few bruises.” He touches Michael’s back, feather-light, and Michael flinches away in surprise. “Sorry.”

“I just wasn’t expecting it,” Michael replies, trying to twist around to see what Allen was pointing at. He can’t, on account of it being on his back, but the motion lets him see where Allen is and that at least is reassuring.

“Still,” Allen says. When he reaches out again this time, Michael is prepared. “I shouldn’t have let my anger get the best of me. I guess I’m just—” he sighs abruptly. “I guess I’m not really sure what I’m meant to be doing right now.” Before Michael can get a word in, Allen quickly taps and circles three areas on his back, two about level with the handles on the filing cabinet and another of unknown origin. “You have bruises here, here, and here. You might want to ice them tonight, just in case.”

He steps back then, and Michael turns around just in time to see a sad look fleeing Allen’s face.

“Maybe I won’t,” he says. “That way I’ll have something to remember you by for a while.” It was genuinely meant to be a joke, but it comes out infinitely more hurt than he’d intended. He pulls his undershirt back on to avoid making eye contact.

Allen doesn’t seem to have any such fear, as he stands there, watching Michael in silence.

“Your resignation letter,” Michael says, picking it up off the table and handing it over. “You’ll need to sign it to make it official.”

Allen takes it but, after a second, sets it right back down. “I don’t want to leave,” he says, his voice barely rising above a whisper. “My family, Mimi, she...” He shakes his head. “We’ve done good work here, sometimes, but it’s taking such a toll on her, and she doesn’t deserve any of it. I love her, I really do, but we just—” He takes a steadying breath. “I can’t help but wonder if it’s the job or if it’s me that’s really the problem. I don’t know if quitting with fix things. If it was simply a matter of what’s best versus what I want, I wouldn’t be having this problem, but as it stands, I just don’t know what to do.”

“Yeah,” Michael says, and he gets it, no matter how much he doesn’t want to. “I can’t tell you what to choose.” He picks his shirt up off the desk and shrugs it on, beginning to button it back up. “You don’t just have to decide just yet. I still have that conference. That’ll give you a couple of days.” His tie goes on in one fluid motion, his vest returns to his shoulders in the next. “For what it’s worth, though, you’ve helped people here in ways that I never could. You’re good at that.”

Allen steps back, giving Michael access to the hatstand when he begins to move in that direction. He picks his hat off its hook and turns it over in his hands. “I think I’m a better person when you’re around,” he says. Allen’s expression is indiscernible. “I hope I’ll see you again when I get back from DC.”

Michael would never admit to running away then, but it’s a near thing. He lets the faint click of the door closing behind him wash over him, basking in the finality of the action. He's done everything he can for now. It's a reassuring thought.

All he can hope for is a few days of relative peace and quiet. Knowing these conferences, it probably wouldn't be much more than an extended briefing, some exchanging of confidential documents, and a shiny new assignment for him to tackle.

Yeah. Okay. Everything will be okay. He tells himself that with a conviction that he doesn’t feel, gets in his car, and drives home for only a few brief minutes of respite.

**Author's Note:**

> Big shout out to anon again for sending that ask because I was partway into thinking of a possible third long fic idea when i got the ask, so they saved me from disaster. I hope it was ok that I did this! also i'm [pentopello](https://pentopello.tumblr.com/) on tumblr if u want to yell at me about PBB!
> 
> I don't know why i made it canon compliant. Do people usually write wish-fulfillment fics that are divergent from their own fics because uh, i might, do, that
> 
> Un-betaed as always. Let me know if I goofed something up!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [cause i want to want you (remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18117350) by [sea_level](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sea_level/pseuds/sea_level)




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